“You’ll go with me, Softly, of course!” observed young Plumtree, otherwise “Jovial Jem,” just as I expected. “There’s a Waterborough ’bus runs right by our lodge-gate: your servant can come over with your traps. Get a greatcoat on, there’s a good fellow, and we’ll start immediately, if not before. A short drain of brandy neat, Miss Lushington, if you please. Look alive, you adorable angel, ministering spirit, I may say. Time’s short, you know, roads woolly, and whipcord scarce.”
“But are you sure you can take me?” I interposed, with expostulatory eagerness. “Yours is a smallish carriage, if that was it I saw just now in the yard” (how devoutedly I wished it was not!). “I fear I shall inconvenience you; and, by the by, where is your servant to sit?” I added, grasping vaguely at the last chance of a reprieve.
“Servant?” said the Jovial, drinking off his brandy at a gulp, “didn’t bring one; don’t want a ‘shoot’ when I’m driving Crafty Kate. There’s only one gate to open if we go the short way, and it opens from us; so I catch it, you know, on the shaft, and there’s no trouble in getting out. Once the apron’s buttoned, never move till the end of the stage, that’s my principle. Wet t’other eye? Thank you, Miss Lushington. Here’s your health! Now, young man, tell the ostler to get the trap round to the front-door; when I drive a gemman, I likes to take him up like a gemman.”
“But if the harness wants altering, or anything?” I urged feebly. “In my crippled state, you know, I can’t get out. Don’t you think, now?—though, of course, I should like the drive very much—don’t you really think it would be better if I were to find my own way over, and you might take a man from here to open the gates and that, who could come back in my return chaise?”
“Not a bit of it!” replied the Jovial. “What’s the use of that? I know the mare, and the mare knows me. You won’t have to get out, never fear. Come, though you’ve got a queer wing, there’s nothing amiss with your pipes. Look here, there’s a yard of tin in that basket. You’ll play all the way, and I’ll drive. Take her in a hole shorter, Ben. Here’s a game! hooray!”
By this time “the Jovial’s” high conveyance—well might he called it a trap—was at the door; Crafty Kate wincing, and lifting and swishing her tail, as if nothing would give her greater pleasure than to knock the whole thing, red wheels, lamps, paint, varnish, and lacquering, all to pieces forthwith. I could not get out of it now, do what I would. Recalling in my own mind every frightful accident I ever remembered to have read, or heard of, that had occurred on wheels, and no whit reassured by an appalling fact I had always considered established, viz. that more long coachmen had been killed out of gigs, than had died any other death, I went upstairs to give my servant directions as to the clothes he should pack up, to wrap myself in a warm greatcoat, and to put another cigar in my mouth, that haply might conceal the involuntary trepidation of my nerves.
How comfortable my sitting-room looked as I left it! It was a cold raw day, and the fire burnt up so cheerily; the easy-chair spread its arms invitingly to receive me in its familiar embrace; there was the newspaper carefully unfolded and spread out on the table, with the last Quarterly uncut, by its side. An amusing novel, of which I had got halfway into the second volume, seemed to entreat me not to leave it unfinished, and two or three letters requiring early answers were lying with their seals opened in mute appeal. All this comfort I was about to exchange for a muddy drive, a drizzling rain, the conversation of a man I did not care about, and worse still, the probable vagaries of Crafty Kate. I confess I have no great confidence in a thorough-bred mare, that swishes her tail a good deal in harness. I thought Miss Lushington, even, looked somewhat pitifully on me, as one about to venture in a dangerous undertaking unawares. Nevertheless I mounted the trap, not without difficulty, was carefully buttoned in by the one-eyed ostler, and felt myself launched forth on stormy seas, with Jovial Jem for a pilot.
On leaving the door it became painfully apparent that Crafty Kate was in a condition of excitement, not to say insubordination, which boded untoward results. Passing between the lines of dilapidated houses that constitute the little village of Soakington, she piaffed and curvetted, and tucked her head in, and hoisted her great angular quarters, in a manner calculated to excite the admiration of all beholders—limited in the present instance to a lame duck, and two boys playing truant from school; but when we emerged on the smooth expanse of the Waterborough road, stimulated by the love of approbation, or urged by a morbid anxiety to get home, the mare took the bit in her teeth, and very nearly made a bolt of it. I confess I clung to the rail that ran round the seat, thankful even for that frail support, and notwithstanding the slight hold it afforded me, narrowly escaped being dashed out, as we turned with fearful rapidity, and entirely on one wheel, like a skater doing the outside edge, up a lane diverging at right angles from the thoroughfare along which we had been bowling at such a pace.
It was evident, however, by Crafty Kate’s demeanour, that this was not the way home. She stopped dead short, stuck her forelegs out, and began nodding her head in that ominous manner, which denotes a determination to fight to the last. “Sit tight, Softly!” exclaimed the Jovial, with a fiendish laugh, as though this had been part of a programme devised for my special entertainment. “Sit tight! whilst I give my lady a taste of the silk!” and without further parley he pulled the whip from its bucket, and commenced a course of punishment on the mare’s sides, which produced no further result than that of causing her to back faster and faster towards the ditch; the tall red wheels hovered on its very brink, when a bright idea flashed across the charioteer’s mind. “Give us a blast of the tin, Softly,” said he, continuing, nevertheless, a vigorous application of the whipcord, “and let us see if your blasting is not more musical than mine!”
I am no performer, I candidly admit, on a trumpet of any description; but a desperate crisis demands a desperate remedy, and seizing the long coach-horn I performed such a solo upon it as has probably never been heard before, or since. “The Jovial” left off flagellating, and laughed till he cried. The mare laid her ears down into her poll, tucked her tail close to her quarters, and went off at score. Completely blown by my exertions, we had gone nearly a mile ere I returned the horn to its case, and found breath to speak.
“But is this the shortest way to The Ashes?” said I, striving by the aid of a “Vesuvian” to relight my cigar, which had gone out in the panic. “I thought we kept straight along the high-road to the turnpike, and then took the first turning to the——”
“O, bother The Ashes;” returned my mercurial companion. “We shall get there quite soon enough. Besides, the governor never shows till feeding-time; busy about the farm you know, mud-larking as I call it. No! no! if you want to see some fun, I’ll show you a game. We’ll just trot down to Joe Lambswool’s, at the World’s End, about two miles further on, and if you do care for sport, I can promise you a real treat. He’s going to pull down the old barn to-day; hasn’t been touched, I dare say, for two hundred years. Talk of rats! why, it’s swarming with them, as big as pole-cats pretty nigh, and twice as savage. He’s got a dawg as I want to see tried, quite a little ’un, what you would call a toy-dawg, you know; but they tell me he’ll tackle to anything alive, and knows how to kill a cat. If I like him I’ll buy him; and we’ll give old Brimstone a treat into the bargain,” added my amiable entertainer, looking back at the bull-terrier, who was toiling behind us, bespattered with mud, his tail lowered, his tongue out, and a villanous expression of sullenness and ferocity stamped on his round massive head.
“I should like it excessively,” I replied, with an inward shudder, belying, most uncomfortably, my unqualified expressions of delight, and the Jovial, turning on me a look of astonished approval, made a queer noise through his teeth, that started Crafty Kate incontinently into a canter.
“Well! I’m in for it now!” was my mental soliloquy, as we went whirling past the dripping trees and hedges with increasing rapidity. “How could I ever be induced to blunder into such a trap as this? A wet day; a dangerous drive; a pot-house gathering, and an afternoon spent in a tumble-down barn, full of draughts I make no doubt, and by no means water-tight; watching for rats, animals of which I have the greatest horror, and circumventing the same by means of ferrets—creatures if possible more disgusting to me than their prey—all because I hadn’t nerve to say ‘No.’ And not a chance now of seeing Miss Merlin when she comes home from hunting! Softly! this is a day’s penance. You must get through it as you best can!”
A rescue, however, when I least expected it, was proposed for me by a kind fortune, to snatch me from the ratting part of my discomforts. The lane down which we were bowling, though of considerable length, was not that proverbial one in which there is no turning. On reaching an angle by a sign-post, the Jovial pulled up, with great animation displayed on his broad white face.
“I can hear ’em running in Tangler’s Copse, as plain as can be,” said he, putting up his hand in the air, and cocking his head on one side to listen. Tangler’s Copse, be it observed, was a straggling woodland in the Castle-Cropper country, from which it was always difficult, and generally impossible, to force a fox into the open. “Listen, Softly!” he continued, with increasing excitement; “I’m blessed if that isn’t the horn! See, Kate hears it too.”
I am not gifted with extraordinary fineness of ear, particularly when well wrapped up on a rainy day; so I turned down the collar of my greatcoat, and took off my shawl-handkerchief to listen. There was no doubt we were in the vicinity of hounds; I could hear them distinctly, running as it seemed with a good scent, and cheered by occasional blasts on the horn.
The drizzling rain struck cold on my bare cheek. Kate’s head was up, her ears erect, her nostrils dilated, and she trembled in every limb.
“Bother the rats for to-day!” exclaimed my mercurial charioteer. “What say you, Softly? Let’s go hunting instead. The mare can jump like fun, and the trap can go anywhere. Open the gate, there’s a good chap! In the next field but one there’s a bridle-road takes us right away to Tangler’s Copse.”
I descended from the tall conveyance to do his bidding, dirtying my gloves, wetting my feet, and daubing my coat with mud in the process; but there is a condition of the human mind, at which it ceases to be a free agent, and I had arrived at that negative state, when we quitted the turnpike-road. Once more climbing with difficulty to my seat, I found myself bumping over the ridge-and-furrow of a large grass-field, and, straining my eyes to find an egress, became aware that it was the Jovial’s intention to drive through a sort of gap in the fence, where the ditch had been partially filled up. It was now time to protest, which I did loudly and energetically; but my objections were too late. “Sit tight, Softly! Gently, Kate!” exclaimed Plumtree in a breath; and with a bump, a jerk, and a most astounding bang against the splash-board, we were safe over, and careering along the next field.
I was glad to see a gate led out of this enclosure. I would have climbed up and down those red wheels, fifty times, rather than repeat the process we had just now accomplished.
Crafty Kate, shamelessly belying the first half of her name, seemed to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, swinging along at a very respectable pace, with her ears cocked, her head and tail both up, and an obvious determination to join the chase with as little delay as possible. The vehicle sprang and jerked, and swung from side to side; the wheels bespattered us from head to foot with mud: the splash-board alone prevented us from shooting out, over the mare’s back. No one who has ever tried it will wish to repeat the uncomfortable diversion of galloping in a gig.
Fortunately the rain began to cease, the clouds cleared away, and a burst of winter sunshine enabled us to see as far as the flatness of the country would allow.
The Jovial pulled up short, not without considerable difficulty. “They’re away, by all that’s lucky,” exclaimed he, shifting his reins into his whip-hand, that he might give me a congratulatory slap on the back, which knocked all the breath out of my body. “Never knew a fox to leave Tangler’s Copse before, and bearing right down upon us too, or I’m a Scotchman! There’s the fox, by jingo! Hold your tongue, Softly!”
The injunction was quite unnecessary, for I am not one of the halloaing tribe. Moreover, my handkerchief was pulled up to my nose, and I did not myself see the cause of my companion’s excitement. He was right, however; presently two or three couple of hounds straggled into the field adjoining that in which we were stationed, ran to and fro along the hedge-side, put their noses down, threw their tongues, and followed by the whole pack, streamed across the pasture on the line of their prey.
It was great fun, and a new sensation, to watch the progress of the field, as one sat an unoccupied spectator, perched in a thing like a tea-tray on a pair of tall red wheels. I can quite understand the pleasure an old gentleman has, who rides quietly out on his cob, to see them “find and go away.”
A couple of simultaneous crashes in the fence announced the arrival in the same field with the hounds of the Earl himself, and a hard-riding gentleman with moustaches, a visitor at the castle. Fifty yards or so to their ri............